Seal hunting has long been known as a cruel practice by animal rights activists and conservationists.  Yesterday, the European Union took steps to ban seal products including “fur skins, organs, meat, oil and blubber.”  An exception is made for seal products originating from indigenous people and “marketed on a not-for-profit basis”.  The Environment News Service explains:

In its announcement of the new regulation, the Council said that several EU member states have adopted or intend to adopt legislation prohibiting trade in seal products, and the regulation “will harmonize rules concerning the marketing of seal products so as to avoid fragmentation and distortion of the internal market.”

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Chris Aultman is the helicopter pilot and Aviation Director of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He served for six years in the United States Marine Corps prior to joining the Sea Shepherd team. During that period Chris spent 13 months at sea and became a veteran of the Gulf War.

Aultman’s first experience with the destruction of the world’s oceans was seeing the disastrous effects of the millions of barrels of oil dumped into the Persian Gulf during that war. This and many other experiences caused Chris to start to see the world for what it really was, and nothing was ever the same again.

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Nine monkeys escaped from an Oregon Health & Science University animal testing lab after a cage was left unlocked. Four were shortly re-captured and four others have been spotted on campus — but one has entirely eluded authorities.

“One of our cage cleaners accidentally left a lock off a cage,” said Jim Newman, a university spokesman. “The cage was closed; however, the animals were able to slide the door open and get out.”

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The Humane Society of the United States has returned to court in attempt to stop the sea lion cull near the Bonneville Dam in Washington and Oregon.

Hundreds of sea lions may be trapped and killed in a program aiming to increase the salmon population in the river. The animal welfare group argues that the NOAA Fisheries Service has not sufficiently explained why the sea lions are being singled out despite other predators (like humans) having a greater impact on the salmon population.

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Weeks before the planned start to the hunting season, Russia’s natural resources minister announced a ban on hunting seals under 1 year old today. The move spares up to 35,000 seals.

“The bloody sight of the hunting of seals, the slaughter of these defenseless animals, which you cannot even call a real hunt, is banned in our country, just as well as in most developed countries, and this is a serious step to protect the biodiversity of the Russian Federation,” said minister Yuri Trutnev.

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HBO will premier a new documentary titled “Death on a Factory Farm” tomorrow at 10 pm EST.

The film is a sequel to 2006’s Emmy-nominated “Dealing Dogs,” which exposed the illegal market for dogs sold to research labs through an undercover investigation by a man going by “Pete.” Well, Pete is back again and this time he landed a job at Wiles Hog Farm.

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Within a matter of months, activists have succeeded in changing a store from a puppy mill vendor to an animal rescue venture.

A pet store in the small town of Elyria, Ohio was the target of intense protests by animal rights activists for months before deciding to close down. Now, a new owner is opening a pet store in the same location that will only have rescued cats and dogs available for adoption.

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The Canadian seal hunt comes around once a year, and along with the hunt comes the international day of action against it: March 15th.

This year is looking more promising than ever. The European Union is considering a complete ban on seal products, a bill to ban the hunt has been introduced in the Canadian senate for the first time since the ’70s, and the general demand for seal products is shrinking worldwide.

An end to the hunt seems inevitable, but it won’t happen without continued pressure. Here are 5 simple ways you can help stop the hunt next Saturday:

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A syndicated news story made its way into multiple English papers earlier this week claiming that arsonists with the Animal Liberation Front inadvertently killed dozens of birds in an attack on a zoo in Italy. Now the New York Times has reported that this may not be the case:

“A recent such protest in Italy turned nasty: so-called ecoterrorists attacked a bird sanctuary about 20 miles from Turin this week with Molotov cocktails, burning down structures and setting dozens of birds free.”

This sentence, buried in a somewhat-related story in today’s paper, directly contradicts the other report’s claim that activists burned down an aviary with 40 birds inside. Even more odd, however, is this report from an Italian paper that while claiming that 40 birds died, also includes two dozen photos of the damage — without a single photo of a dead bird.

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Apparently sea lions like salmon a little too much. People in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho are threatened — they want all the tasty salmon for themselves.

Okay, perhaps that’s a bit of an oversimplification. But I have to wonder — if salmon didn’t taste good, would people be going to such great lengths to prevent a natural predator-prey relationship between a sea mammal and a fish?

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Scientists in Florida have come up with a strange way to stop crocodiles from crawling into cities and towns.

Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is testing a program to strap magnets onto the heads of crocodiles that wander into developed areas, saying the magnet could “break the homing cycle” and prevent them from returning.

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The US Fish and Wildlife Service rejected an attempt by trophy hunters to re-allow shipments of polar bear parts from countries where it is legal to kill the embattled species.

The Humane Society of the United States lobbied the agency hard against the proposed reopening of the trade. The animals are listed as a threatened species in the United States, but other countries still allow the bears to be hunted.

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Animal rights activists have filed suit against Washington’s King County to dispute a state-wide law that essentially allows farmers to decide what treatment is humane and what is not.

In a press release, the Northwest Animal Rights Network declared that “Foxes should not be guarding the henhouse” and argued that the law is against the state constitution. The suit focuses on a handful of clauses in a Prevention of Cruelty to Animals law from 1994 that the group believes are particularly vague.

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The Animal Legal Defense Fund is celebrating their annual Justice For Animals Week by asking people to partake in a new, specific action for animals every day this week.

For the first day, they’re asking people to help spread the word by telling friends on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere to visit their site to partake in the next six actions. But most importantly, the organization says they hope to add 10,000 signatures to the Animal Bill of Rights during this week alone.

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The original campaign against McDonald’s was launched in 2000, and after the company worked with PETA to make some basic animal welfare changes, the campaign was withdrawn. Now, PETA says, there are more humane methods of killing animals such as chickens, but McDonald’s won’t use them. Controlled Atmosphere Killing (CAK) would allow chickens in McDonald’s suppliers’ slaughterhouses to die relatively painlessly, but they have refused to consider asking their suppliers to switch to CAK—a move that would cost McDonald’s nothing—and so PETA has unleashed their wrath at McCruelty.com. PETA says:

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The 120-year-old lobster was out the door and heading towards freedom, but then an obstinate UPS driver wouldn’t agree to give the lobster’s box careful handling on its way back to the Atlantic.

Craig the 20-pound lobster made headlines after PETA asked Brooklyn restaurant owner Gina Ng to allow the animal to be released back into the wild. But yesterday, when PETA volunteers and a UPS driver arrived to take Craig away, the plan fell apart.

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The parents of a 5-year-old Australian boy who was eaten by a 14-foot-long crocodile have asked authorities not to euthanize the animal, presumably recognizing that the crocodile was merely protecting its river home from an intruder.

The parents run a crocodile sight-seeing business, so it seems that they must understand that the animal is not vicious or sick. The animal will be sent to a zoo or park, but unfortunately will not be released back into the wild.

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Often animals will show signals of disaster long before the human population is affected, leading researchers to seek widespread information of wildlife fatalities for both the safety of people and other animals.

While data of wildlife fatalities or infection exists in different agencies across the US, researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Fort Johnson are working on a pilot program to centralize the data to form an Environmental Surveillance Network in the South Carolina.

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Shackled, Beaten, Abused is the tagline of a new PETA ad designed to raise awareness about the mistreatment of captive elephants.

It features Celina Jaitley, who is a popular actress in India. Last year she also participated in an elephant conservation fundraiser in Switzerland that raised one million francs.

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Thousands of gray seals could be spared particularly brutal deaths this year because sealers have been unable to find a buyer for the pelts.

This news comes as the European Union considers a ban on all seal products, an action which some think drove typical pelt buyers to rethink their purchase this year. Multiple sources say the hunt will likely not happen, but Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans still officially say the hunt is on.

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